Orson Welles, Vol I (19 page)

If Hilton had betrayed so much as a flicker of interest in the boy – whether
emotional or sexual – Micheál would certainly have moved in on him with the speed and the venom of a black mamba.
²⁴
Micheál may even have known what Orson was attempting before Orson himself did. There was something witch-like about him, as he freely admitted, with his intuitive, thought-reading faculties. Talking about Micheál’s alleged absence from his first six weeks in Dublin, Orson cited
as proof that ‘Micheál would have seen through it, you see, and Micheál didn’t like the fact that Hilton had that kind of gullibility. Micheál hated the fact that I had put over anything on them.’ It may even be that Orson had tried to charm Micheál. Hortense Hill had written to Orson: ‘The only thing that might happen is that you might meet a brilliant person that was fascinating company that – ’
‘What dire threat were you about to make and what sinister power stayed your hand??????’ wrote back Orson. ‘Seriously, my purse and my virtue are intact and will remain so long as I confine myself to my present company.’ If he did try to charm Micheál, he was taking on more than he could handle. Micheál was passionate and elusive, emotional and unwavering, skittish and savage. He was all of these
things by turn, sometimes all at once, and he knew it; knew himself with awful familiarity, and he was able to bring all these things to his acting, though he was just as capable of substituting for it a
much inferior high-flown manner. His writing – the very account of Orson’s first night – was, for all its beguiling wit and fantasy, sometimes possessed of a startling ugly honesty. Perhaps he
saw, and deplored, to what extent Welles was substituting energy and exuberance for his real self: a self, despite Orson’s denials (‘I am like Hilton; I believe anything anyone tells me’
²⁵
), not entirely dissimilar to Micheál’s.

None of these complexities could have clouded Welles’s delight in his notices for
Jew Süss
and his continuing acclaim in the role of Karl Alexander. ‘Tonight,’ he
wrote to Hortense Hill, ‘I took 6 curtain calls alone – with the gallery and the pit shouting and stamping and calling out my name. This sounds like an
appalling
boast, and so it is.’ Understandable, and forgivable: every single notice praised him, in detailed terms.
Dublin Opinion
reported that ‘the young American actor received nothing short of a personal triumph’,
The Herald
pronounced his
impersonation ‘interesting at every moment’, while
The Independent
found ‘a touch of humanity and simplicity in his swinishness which in less expert hands might have been lost … Orson Welles captured it magnificently.’
²⁶
Everywhere the performance was held to be ‘a notable success’ and ‘excellent’. That shrewd, spinsterish self-appointed commissar of the Dublin theatre, Joseph Holloway, confided
to his diary that Welles ‘looked the uncouth, hard-drinking, loud-voiced brute the author intended him to be and made quite an impression by a clever character study. He was blustering and sensual and repellent.’
²⁷

The Dublin critics did not, none the less, abandon all sense of proportion.
The Irish Times
struck a cautionary note that was repeated elsewhere: ‘It will be necessary to see him
in other parts before it can be said that he is the accomplished actor that he seemed last night in a part that might have been especially made for him.’
²⁸
‘Whether it is that there has never till now been a character like Karl Alexander portrayed at the Gate,’ wrote ‘N’ in the
Weekly Times
, ‘or whether Welles is really a brilliant actor, remains to be seen.’

No such reservations were made
in what was for Welles the most important of these notices. J.J. Hayes, the
New York Times
’s man in Dublin, nailed his colours to the mast in his report: ‘the Duke is played by a young American actor, 18 years old, whose performance is astonishingly fine.’
²⁹
Hayes then offered a brief synopsis of Welles’s Irish expedition, dangerously recycling a legend to which some of his American readers would
have been able to give the lie: ‘Welles, who had appeared occasionally at the Goodman Theatre Chicago and in small parts with the Theatre Guild in New
York …’ Reporting the first night triumph, Hayes outlined the prodigy’s future plans: ‘Dublin is eager to see him in other roles … his coming will probably lead to the production of
Coriolanus
, which was shelved … because a suitable man could not
be found for the title part … 35 years since it was done in Ireland by Sir Frank Benson.’

Now this really is publicity of a kind indispensable at the start of a career. How fortunate that he should have had a tremendous admirer in the Gate’s press office: one Orson Welles. There is no question that Welles made a smash at the beginning of his time in Dublin, but the continuing waves that his
name created owe not a little to the fact that he was in constant contact with the press, and able to feed them stories whenever things were a bit slack. The
Coriolanus
story is a real novelty; actually not such a bad idea: Aufidius’s scornful ‘boy’ would have had a peculiar resonance. Nothing came of it, probably because it had just entered his mind at that moment, and went out of it a moment
later.

‘People began to talk about Orson,’
³⁰
wrote Mac Liammóir. ‘ “Young Welles” they called him, with that curious bantering sense of self-congratulation the public feels when its new idol has not reached the age of twenty; and many Dublin matrons had a proprietary look in their eyes when they praised him as though they had given him birth and were vaguely responsible for the wayward and
unexpected qualities of his talent.’ He became the toast of Dublin, when, that is, he was not painting flats, catching midnight matinees, and rehearsing for the next play. ‘It will delight you,’ he wrote to Hortense Hill, ‘who so long have lamented my social delinquencies, to know that I am now found in the society of young femininity and that I blossom in starched shirt front once or twice a week,
to the edification of various Dublin “sets”!’ He made the acquaintance of the Gate’s principal supporters, later arch rivals, the Earl and Countess of Longford, Edward – the Earl – revealing that ‘his favourite words were virile, pronounced virral and futile, pronounced footle. “Life is footle, Lord Long
FORD
,” he used to say; “life is footle.” He was a great man at a party. When he thought a party
had gone on long enough, he would say, “Take me out to Kilmashogue to see the fairies!” I don’t know that anyone ever did.’
³¹
His sheer Americanness fascinated everyone: Denis Johnston wrote in his diary about ‘the new American boy Orson Welles playing what he calls “The Dook”.’
³²
Lady Longford, wit and novelist, was given the full guided tour: Orson Welles, The Early Years: ‘The extraordinary
thing about Orson was that he became a legend almost
at once. Everyone started talking about him … that he had walked round the Great Wall of China; that he had played in Greek plays in Greece and had Turkish baths in Turkey. He was said to be eighteen at first, and later seventeen. But one thing was certain – he could act. There was no doubt about that. And another thing was, he was as nice and
friendly as could be.’
³³

Quite apart from the cocktail circuit, Dublin in 1931 was an extraordinary place to be. The Irish Free State, newly established, was conducting its affairs with some panache. The terrible beauty born in 1916 had transformed itself into the forms and structures of regular government: Denis Johnston recalled the lavish viceregal hospitality of the period, remembering
1931 as being ‘a time of balls and parties’.
³⁴
The city’s life was a curious blend of the stately and old-fashioned with the politically historic. V.S. Pritchett, just a few years before, noted that ‘people had tea parties. They lived on cake. One was back in Mrs Gaskell’s country world; and at the same time was thrown forward into the first conflict of colonialism.’
³⁵
The heroic figures of the recent past were very much present: as recently
as 1929, Maud Gonne MacBride had been arrested. ‘British or Irish Free State seems to make no difference. She is still evidently considered a stormy petrel,’
³⁶
wrote Joseph Holloway. Pritchett was alarmed, taking tea with Yeats, to see him go to the window and ‘swoosh the tea leaves into Merrion Square, for all I knew on the heads of Gogarty, AE, Lady Gregory, James Stephens – who might have popped
over from the library or the Museum.’ Yeats remained a commanding figure in the community. The theatre – despite the temporary absence of the Abbey – was still a central event in its existence, whether the plays were actually attended or not. The debates over O’Casey were still raging: was his picture of Irish history and the Irish character acceptable? It was a mere two years since
The Silver
Tassie
had been turned down. St Stephen’s Green was daily agog with the events of the previous night on stage, a sort of living newspaper; the various factions were regulars in the soap opera that was Dublin’s daily life. So the arrival of a very young American actor at the still controversial, the still radical and daring, Gate Theatre, was an event.

And Dublin was always ready for a novelty.
‘It is astonishing,’
³⁷
wrote Pritchett, ‘to see how watchful Dubliners are of each other. This is said to be because Dublin is a village where everyone knows everyone else; certainly a rural ethos prevails. Every word uttered in the pub or at dinner will be repeated and added to; so that one is living in a web of gossip, usually with a malicious edge to it;
you can see your friends eagerly alerted
for it and you know they are teasing it out of you. Malice they love. It keeps their gifts alive, establishes their distinction, and sharpens what they most care for: their personality.’ That was what Orson most cared for, too. He took to the attention he received with almost indecent relish. Again, Micheál Mac Liammóir was on hand, observing and judging. ‘When the demon of showmanship was on
him, he would be intolerable; something dark and brutal swept through him when a stupid audience surrounded him, and he would use them mercilessly, without shame or repulsion, blaring out his impromptu opinions and trumpeting his jungle-laughter as one tinsel fable followed another, and the circle of fish-eyes watched his antics spell-bound like children at a country fair … it was the shameful sight
of Ariel borrowing the tatters of Caliban and wearing them with such naive complacency that made one blush and look away.’
³⁸
The note of disappointment sounds again. It was that public self that Micheál hated in Orson; in private he was someone else. ‘With theatre people he was at his best, good nature bubbling irresistibly out of him sweet as wild honey in a young bear’s paw. He was charming,
almost invariably charming, and full of generosity, giving little parties for us all and suddenly asking for advice like a penitent child who has been fractious when there were strangers in the house.’
³⁹

Most of his time he was with theatre people, so this best side of him must have been frequently on display. He seems to have plunged into every available activity; as if his multiple duties
at the Gate (especially in the Press Office) were not enough, he became Head of Design for an enterprise (‘an art-theatrish stock company quite distinct from the Gate’, he wrote to Roger Hill) run by, and starring, his chum William Sherwood. They played at the Peacock Theatre, the Abbey’s Studio, available for hire in the absence of the resident company. ‘I am kept in a state of perpetual sweaty
bliss.’ Sherwood was an ambitious fellow, and the list of plays in the weekly repertory that he and Orson got on is impressive. Their first,
Alice in Wonderland
, adapted by Sherwood, called for twenty-two settings. It opened the day after Boxing Day, 1931, and was liked by
The Independent
. ‘The settings, designed and decorated by Orson Welles are attractive and appropriate … in the true spirit.’
⁴¹
That stern judge, Joseph Holloway, was not so impressed: ‘The whole show gave one the idea of being hastily strung together and lacking in vitality …’
⁴⁰
which, if true, is not entirely surprising, since it was the day before the Gate opened Pádraic Colum’s Persian fantasia
Mogu of the Desert
, in which Orson had a small but crucial role. His productivity,
possibly at the expense of excellence,
was thus established at a very early age. He liked, in later life, to quote Chesterton’s remark that if a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly, but it is doubtful whether Chesterton intended an endorsement of sloppiness, rather an encouragement of attempting tasks beyond one’s apparent abilities. For Orson, it would seem, the sensation of being urgently occupied was often more important than
the satisfaction of completing things to the best of his ability.

His season at the Gate was progressing interestingly, but perhaps not thrillingly enough for him. The Duke proved a hard act to follow. Ovations can prove dangerously addictive, and there was little in what came next that could provide them. Nor, it is reasonable to assume, did the directors of the Gate particularly wish to
provide them. Theirs was a serious theatre, with radical aspirations. They had two leading actors, Edwards the character lead, Mac Liammóir the romantic, and their programme was to provide a blend of modern and classical plays, performed in a stimulating style. They were also trying to develop a company of actors who had a sure sense of style and a sure sense of themselves. In those terms, it would
not only have been strange, it would have been disastrous both for the theatre and for Welles if they had sought to provide a series of vehicles for him. It is understandable that Orson should have regretted this attitude, but peculiar that so many of his biographers have also accused Edwards and Micheál of jealousy and spite in not promoting his career more spectacularly than they did. In the event,
they handled the sixteen-year-old well and generously.